


Misunderstandings

by PandaHeist



Category: DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23832400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaHeist/pseuds/PandaHeist
Summary: “Master Bruce.”“What is it, Alfred?”“I regret to inform you that it may be time to have a certain… talk, with young Master Timothy.”
Relationships: Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 14
Kudos: 303





	Misunderstandings

**Author's Note:**

> Timelines don't exist. Kind of like... early 90s Young Justice, I guess? Kind of.

“Master Bruce.”  


“What is it, Alfred?”  


“I regret to inform you that it may be time to have a certain… talk, with young Master Timothy.”

  


*

  


It wasn’t often that Bruce called any of them into his study. Usually they would meet in the cave. For bat business. As for any other kind of business… well, Tim had his reasons to be wary of whatever was about to go down. An awkward attempt at parenting, perhaps? Bruce did tend to forget that, despite the honourary adoption, Tim did still technically have parents of his own. Even if he stayed at the manor more often than not.  


Tim knocked on the door, more as a formality than anything, and pushed his way inside. Bruce had clearly been waiting for him, the desk in front of him cleared of anything he may have been working on and a determined look on his face. Determined, and just a touch constipated. And yeah, that was pretty much Bruce's default expression, but it still sent enough warning bells up in Tim’s head that he considered retreating right back out the door. Unfortunately he didn't get the chance. Bruce was already gesturing at the chair across from himself at the desk.  


Tim sat.  


Bruce cleared his throat.  


Tim blinked.  


Bruce cleared his throat again.  


“Did you need something, Bruce?”  


A long suffering sigh. Bruce’s hand came up to massage the bridge of his nose before falling back to the desk.  


“Alfred suggested that it may be time we have a talk.”  


“O…kay?”  


“About certain changes. You may be experiencing with your… body. And new urges. You may be having.”  


Tim was glad Alfred hadn’t stopped by with tea, because wouldn’t that have been a hell of a mess to clean up if Tim had been holding it at that moment. In no way was he mentally prepared to receive the sex talk from _Batman_. Not as Robin, not as Tim Drake, and especially not at 2:37 on a perfectly nice Sunday afternoon when he could have been doing literally _anything else_. At least have the decency to plan it for right after busting up some particularly gruesome crime scene so he could get all of the traumatization done with in one go.  


“Right. Uh. There’s a class. At school. For that. So you don’t need to… you know,” Tim articulated quite elegantly as he flapped a hand around in front of himself, “I’m covered. I’m so good.”  


Bruce looked as though he wanted nothing more than to take the out he’d been presented with, but alas, nothing has been done the right way until it’s been done the Bat way.  


And thank god Bruce was so emotionally constipated, because while it still docked as the most horrifying forty-five minutes of Tim’s short sad life, the talk skipped right over the whole “when a man loves a woman” cliché and went straight into the facts. There were statistics. So many statistics. But Tim could deal with numbers all day long, so long as Bruce didn’t pull out a banana.  


Just as Tim thought the worst of it was over, it dipped right back into being weird again. He should have known better than to let his guard down. See, Tim was on a team. And that team just happened to have some girls on it. And sometimes they would hang out over the weekends. Like, all weekend.  


“I won’t tell you to stop hanging out with the girls, but I think it would be best going forward to put an end to any co-ed sleepovers with your team. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but this way all of our minds can be at ease.”  


And oh god, Tim had never thought about any of the girls in that context before and he never really wanted to, thank you very much, Bruce. Sure, Cassie and Cissie were pretty, but they were just _friends_. He wasn't going to pretend that he couldn't understand Bruce’s reasoning though. It was a fair request, and addressed a concern the girls’ parents had voiced right when they had first started Young Justice anyway.  


Tim agreed to the new terms without a fight. It’s not like Batman wasn’t constantly making new rules for Tim’s team, even if those new rules generally tended to be less personal in nature. Hoping that was the end of it, Tim stood and prepared to leave.  


About halfway to the door, Bruce spoke up again, looking more awkward that he had at any point throughout the whole conversation, and wasn’t _that_ an impressive feat.  


“One more thing, Tim. This is me speaking not as Batman, but as Bruce, your guardian and someone who loves you. I want you to know that some things are natural, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed or like you need to… hide anything-“  


Was this the part where he would tell Tim that he could talk to him about anything, and he’d love him no matter what-  


“God knows Alfred has seen all kinds of things on Dick’s sheets. And worse on the Batsuit. It’s part of his job.”  


Nope. Just letting him know it was okay to have wet dreams, apparently. If Bruce’s aim was to get Tim out of his study as quickly as possible, he had succeeded. Tim yelled a quick goodbye and escaped into the hall, slamming the door probably a touch harder than he needed to, but at least it would help make his point. His point being _please never speak to me again._  


Against all odds, Tim found himself almost immediately regretted leaving in such a rush when an amused voice from over his shoulder said, “Don’t know how Bruce is still so bad at this. Guess he never thought he’d have to do if a _third_ time.”  


Tim sighed and ran a hand through his hair. For how secretive Bruce tried to be, it was a shame that no conversation in this house could ever be private. Dick’s grin was almost wide enough that Tim would have had reason to suspect Joker venom, and his posture was too comfortable for him to have been there for any short amount of time. It was safest to assume he’d heard everything. “Why don’t you go in for round two? I’m sure Bruce would appreciate the bonding time.”  


“Unlikely, Timmy,” Dick snorted, and he hooked an arm over Tim’s shoulders, leading him down the hall and away from where Bruce could no doubt still hear them talking. At least away from where he could hear them talking _in person_. Who knew what kind of bugs he had laying around. “Anywaaay, who was it, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”  


“You knooow. On that team of yours. Who's got you so excited? Is it the blonde one? She’s cute.”  


Tim shook off Dick’s arm and gave him a weird look. “There are multiple blondes. And I still don’t know what you’re on about.”  


“Tim. Come on. You go for an overnight hangout with the YJ crew, and when you come back this morning, Alfred catches you sneaking around doing your own laundry,” Dick waved his hands about, almost smacking Tim in the face all while ignoring the horrified _‘he saw that?’_ before continuing his interrogation. “So which of the girls was it that got you all worked up? I’m your big bro, I have to know so I can tease you about it for the rest of your life.”  


“Why do you even- ugh, never mind. It was just Kon and I last night. The girls usually don’t stay anyway, and Bart is grounded.”  


“Ahh, just you and Kon, huh. Guy’s night. Cool, coo- wait.” They’d made it to the kitchen by then, and Dick dropped the peanut butter from where he’d just pulled it out of the cupboard. He turned to Tim so fast that Tim would be worried about whiplash, if he didn’t already know that Dick could literally fold himself in half. In any direction. “Just you and Kon?? Tim! Timmy! My sweet baby bird! You know I love you no matter what, right? And Bruce and Alfred do too!”  


“Yes, but I still don’t know what this has to do with me trying to scrub marshmallow fluff out of my pants?” Honestly, Tim just wanted to make himself a coffee and maybe go back to bed. He never got much sleeping done when it was just him and Kon hanging out. Kon somehow managed to be even harder to handle than usual, which was saying something.  


Dick’s excitement had faded into confusion, his head tilted to one sided as he stared at Tim. “…Marshmallow fluff?”  


“Yeah? That’s why I was doing laundry?”  


“But then… why were you trying to sneak around?”  


“These YJ nights are supposed to be team building exercises. If Bruce thought we were just fooling around like a bunch of dumb teenagers, he’d stop letting me go.”  


“Oh. Good point,” Dick was silent for a moment. “Huh. I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.”  


For the smart one, Tim could be pretty slow on the uptake sometimes. Everything clicked into place as he watched Dick resume the assembly of his PB&J. Bruce hadn’t just chosen a random date on the calendar to humiliate his teenage sidekick; he thought Tim was- Alfred thought... It wasn’t often that Tim found himself envious of his friends’ superpowers, but the ability to phase through the floor, and possibly straight out of existence, sounded pretty great right about then.  


Tim retreated back to his bedroom without his coffee.

  


*

  


A few weeks later found Tim and Kon alone at the Justice Cave once again. And maybe, just maybe, Dick hadn’t been too far off with his assumptions. Tim hadn’t lied about the marshmallow fluff, and they certainly weren’t at the stage where he felt he needed to be having any particular conversations, but…  


Tim’s heart was going a mile a minute. His laptop balanced precariously between his and Kon's legs, _Wendy the Werewolf Stalker_ paused on screen. He and Kon leaned in slowly, both of their faces equally red. There was only a hairsbreadth left between them and their very first kiss and-  


And Tim’s heart stopped, not in a good way, at the sound of the door sliding open behind them and god, he _really_ needed to look into that whole phasing through the floor thing. Honestly, he really should have known that Batman would be stopping in more often than usual for the next while. Tim sighed and stood, carefully avoiding Bruce’s eyes. As embarrassed as he was, he’d recently survived the sex talk with this guy. He lived with the man. He’d watched him pour orange juice into his cereal just that morning. Nothing Bruce did could intimidate him at this point.  


Kon, unfortunately, had never seen Batman in his underwear, and was entirely frozen in place. Until Batman glared him into motion and as far away from Tim as the confines of the room would allow. He probably would have gone straight through the wall of the mountain if he didn't think it would piss off the Batman even further.  


Rolling his eyes, Tim walked over to join his mentor before that disapproving glare was inevitably turned on him.  


Batman’s eyes didn’t leave Kon once as he pulled out one of his various communicators.  


“Kent. You need to come pick up your son.” His eyes narrowed behind his mask. “I don’t care if you think he’s your son or not. If he’s not very far away from _my_ son and out of my sight in the next thirty seconds, I’ve got a lump of kryptonite with his name on it.”  


“Bru- Batman! What the hell!” Tim whined, catching Kon’s panicked look, “You can’t just-“  


“Robin. We’re going.”  


“Wait, you can’t-”  


_“We’re. Going.”_  


Needless to say, Tim was dragged back to the manor for the night, leaving behind a traumatized half-Kryptonian clone to have his mental breakdown in peace.

  


Tim sort of expected to be banned from seeing Kon, and that would be that. Not that he'd _listen_ \- he'd been sneaking around Bruce's long enough before he'd even become Robin, he could do it again. But the next morning, he found himself back in Bruce’s study, sitting in the same chair from all those weeks ago. This time though, the desk was covered in an array of rainbow coloured pamphlets, and Bruce cleared his throat a few times before picking the first one off of the stack.  


“It has come to my attention that I may have given you the wrong talk.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I wrote something. I wish I could give kudos to anyone who made it to the end of that.
> 
> I like to think that Jason swings by a few days later (because you know, timelines don't exist, so Jason is here) and hands Tim a box of green glow in the dark condoms... and Tim hides those immediately because he's definitely not going to be the one to give Batman the idea for Kryptonite condoms. You know Bruce would have those on the market at record speed. And then buy out the whole stock himself for Tim's personal use.


End file.
